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Oneiromancer
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Blondbeard wrote:
Actually thatīs not entierly true. Scientists do belive that there might have arisen a small abundanca (1:10^9) of matter over antimatter. (donīt ask me how :))

Yeah, what I thought was that this small abundance arose at some point way in the distant past, and that just ballooned out into what we see today.

Or perhaps there are matter galaxies and antimatter galaxies, spread out throughout the universe, and that's where all the "dark matter" comes from. All I know about it, is from a class about 4 years ago, and random seminars and news articles, so I am far from an authority on this branch of physics, and I am sure that there are non-physicists here who know more than I do about it.

Game on,

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05-28-2005 at 07:16 PM
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Malarame
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One of the profs here has a doctorate in theoretical physics and in class one day he casually mentioned that many theoretical physicists believe that antimatter is nothing more than real matter traveling backward in time. I later asked him to elaborate (when it was just the two of us) and I don't remember what his explanation was, but it made sense at the time. Has anyone ever heard of this, and if so could they explain?

[Edited by Malarame at Local Time:05-29-2005 at 04:32 AM: spelling]

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05-29-2005 at 04:32 AM
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Blondbeard
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Malarame wrote:
One of the profs here has a doctorate in theoretical physics and in class one day he casually mentioned that many theoretical physicists believe that antimatter is nothing more than real matter traveling backward in time

If so it feels really really strange that matter and antimatter binds together and forms particles. I mean... How could they do that if they donīt travel along the same timeline? It is theoreticly possible, I suppose, but then the antiquark must "feel" that itīs getting into a meson when the quark "feels" that the meson is getting disintegrated. It must be quite a blow to the theory of free will because when we create for example a positron and an electron you could just as well say that we destroy them, as the positron sees it. And how could we destroy something which in a sense didnīt already exist?

I know that the Dirac equation yields negative energy solutions, and that these represents antimatter. And I also know that you in Feynmandiagrams paint antiparticles as going bacwards in time. But my profesor/teacher seemed to think that this was nothing more than a conviniant notation. But he is an experimentalist (working at CERN) and maybe he doesnīt mention all theories in the particlephysics-course Iīm reading.
05-29-2005 at 08:59 AM
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Oneiromancer
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It seems to me that the best explanation for that is a frame of reference thing. Like how if you're driving in a car and you pass another car on the highway...if you had no way of knowing that the car was moving forward, you could say it was moving backwards from you (at a speed equal to the amount you're going faster than it).

There's something with the superconductor that I'm working on, where in the superconducting state it breaks Time Reversal Symmetry. Now, of course this doesn't mean that time is reversing...but apparently if it could, then it wouldn't act the same with time flowing backwards as it does forwards. Weird theoretical stuff that I am happy to ignore and just do my experiments. :)

Game on,

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05-29-2005 at 09:11 AM
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Blondbeard
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Yes. Very weird stuff. What I ment was that if the positron actually comes from our future the manner in which it gets to the point where it meets the electron must in some degree be dependant of what we do in the future. Thus such a theory means that whatever we are going to do in the future in a sense we have already done it. Another possibility is that you have a whole bunch of paralell universes and that the future the positron comes from isnīt neceserely the future we are heading towards. Very, very weird. :)
05-29-2005 at 11:03 AM
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silver
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Chemistry and electricity are deterministic, ergo our brains are deterministic. But that doesn't mean there's no free will. It just means there's no Free Will.

You have mental models of everything you encounter - the computer, the lightbulb, other people, and yourself. You use these mental models as behavior predictors. You may as well treat yourself (and other people) as having free will because that's your best bet of predicting their behavior.

Let me illustrate with a couple simpler examples:

* The thermostat doesn't make the room "want" to be cold, but that is a good functional model of how it works, and so you might as well consider it "wanting" the room to be cold.

* A chess playing computer of any skill is a totally deterministic device, yet it's complex enough that your best best of predicting what it will do is to find the best move and assume it will do that. You ignore the algorithms - you'd only run those slower than it would, and instead model its behavior as if it were actually playing a good game of chess, instead of just juggling numbers.

So, similarly: human brains are so complicated that you won't ever have a model so complete that you can predict them -- so functionally, your best mental model of other people and yourself is to treat them as agents with free will. In that sense free will is very very real, because if you ignore it and try to understand people some other way, you will fail to know what they're going to do (and never get dates, or jobs, or even make friends. there's all kinds of reasons to "predict" behavior of people).


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05-29-2005 at 11:49 AM
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Blondbeard
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Well, at least that is true if physics is real, which I doubt. I belive in the soul and Free Will. Not in physics. And there really is no way to "prove" what is right to belive. That is because our mind is limited in itīs capacity. What we derive using logic might just be so very wrong. I mean... you could after all program a computer to say that two plus two is 123. Our brain could be equally flawed, and itīs anyway pretty obvious that we never will be able to get a total understanding of the universe. Thus there is always room for something else beyond what we "know" today. Even within physics. Nevertheless, or maybe because of these factors, physics is interesting :)
05-29-2005 at 12:50 PM
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silver
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Blondbeard wrote: What we derive using logic might just be so very wrong.

A common misunderstanding about what logic is. I blame Star Trek. They totally abused the word and became a cultural icon and now everyone has no idea what logic is about and can make statements like yours.

Logic is a methodoloy, with no premises of its own, which goes from things you already (for reasons having nothing to do with logic) believe are true to other things which are also true.

If you believe souls exist, that is no more or less logical than my believing souls do not exist. Because neither statement has jack squat to do with logic. They are statements of belief: premises.

We could, then, logically derive consequences from our beliefs and reach radically different conclusions about the rest of the world, but both of us would be perfectly logical in doing that. We simply disagreed on premises.

What you derive from logic is always true, provided your premises were true. If the premises are a matter of faith, then so are your (logical) conclusions from them. Logic can not tell your faith is wrong because it can't go further back than your premises. If the premises come from emotions or feelings, then so do the (logical) conclusions you might draw from them. Logic is not incompatible with emotion (despite what Star Trek keeps saying) - I can take a premise of "I love the color blue" and make logical conclusions from that, no problem. The premise is pretty much undebatable because no one has more insight to my feelings than I (except perhaps my therapist).

I do not care to debate your premises (souls and Free Will and not physics), because those are articles of faith and thus debate is pointless. I just wanted to point out that that has nothing to do with logic :).


[Edited by silver at Local Time:05-29-2005 at 02:01 PM]

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05-29-2005 at 01:58 PM
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bdcribbs
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Perhaps logic should be plural here?
Recommended reading: "The Mind's I" Douglas Hofstadter & Daniel Dennet.
05-29-2005 at 02:18 PM
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Blondbeard
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silver wrote:
Logic is a methodoloy, with no premises of its own, which goes from things you already (for reasons having nothing to do with logic) believe are true to other things which are also true.

Sory if I am starting to anoy you, but... What if the human brain is incapable of taking these methodic steps with no premises of their own? Or rather: maybe you think that you have used logic in getting from a premise to a conclusion when actually you have not.
Oh, alright! I do not say that logic doesnīt exist. I just say that what we belive is a logical conclusion given a set of premises actually might be the result of some malfunctioning of our brains. My point is that even if our premises where correct our conclusion might very well be wrong. Even when we are compleatly sure that the steps leading to them are perfectly logical. So when you think that you can logicaly draw a conclusion based on diferent premises that is also a matter of faith. Faith in your own ability to use logic. Also physics is a matter of faith (as is everything). So I guess that debating anything at all is pretty pointless, but it might be fun.

(I really wish that I was better at expressing myself in english. It feels as if I only have about one quarter of my comunication abilitys.)
05-29-2005 at 04:33 PM
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Oneiromancer
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Fascinating stuff, but getting really off-topic. I suggest whoever's turn it is to post a puzzle, do so, and if you guys want to continue this conversation, make a new topic in Anything or move to PMs or e-mails instead.

Game on,

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05-29-2005 at 06:39 PM
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Mattcrampy
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Let's use logic to look at this. Cause it's fun.

The premises are: that logic is a system independent from premises, that logic is a system whereby we take premises and form new premises, that a premise may or may not be true.

If logic is a system independent from premises, and its output is premises, then we can say that the logical system does not influence the premises it outputs. Thus, a premise derived from a logical system and a set of premises only depends on which logical system and which premises are used. If this is so, a person who uses the same logical system and uses the same premises should logically derive the same output premise.

Now, logic is a system independent from premises. A premise being true or false is in itself a premise, and thus the derivation of a logical premise is not affected by the truthfulness of the starting premises. (The truthfulness of the output premise will be affected by the truthfulness of the starting premises, but not the logical system itself.)

Thus, a logical premise can be derived by anyone using the same logical system, regardless of whether or not they agree with the premises, so long as they actually know all the premises. If our brains are incapable of doing so, the premise will not be logical, and that can be demonstrated by independent evaluation, as a person using the same logical system will not be able to arrive at the same result.

Regarding the argument that arguing anything is pointless because of our inability to determine universal truth: Sure, except there are certainly levels of truth. There are things which are considered 'somewhat' universal - for example, the sky is blue, or Newton's Laws of Motion. Newton's Laws of Motion don't always apply, and they're not exact. But it's close enough to accurate to be readily and easily demonstratable. It's not universal truth, by any means, but it's a good, solid, workable model for terrestrial physics.

As we can't truly define a 'universal' truth, we can go from 'kinda universal' truths, and for the most part, they're exactly the same. Only problem is when you use 'kinda universal' truths and run into a situation where they don't apply. Things we consider 'true' now, like 'women and men should be given equal opprtunity' or 'independent expression is important', weren't always considered true, but that doesn't mean you can't use them as part of a logical argument, and that doesn't mean they're not a good basis to base a personal philosophy on. You just have to willing to adapt when new 'truths' come along.

Incidentally, this is why I fear the idea of eternal or very long life - humans aren't traditionally very good at discarding incorrect premises, and death has been the only way we've been able to discard premises that turn out to be false.

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05-29-2005 at 07:07 PM
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Blondbeard
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Yeah, I know itīs gone of topic. Sory :(
Anyway it technically is silvers turn, but he doesnīt have a puzzle. So anyone? Please post a puzzle!

[Edited by Blondbeard at Local Time:05-29-2005 at 07:21 PM]
05-29-2005 at 07:15 PM
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Tablesaw
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Since I'm not sure who's supposed to be putting up a puzzle, and since I don't want the thread to die again, here's a quick puzzle I used in a similar forum:

Fill in the blank in the following sequence:
Capricorn, Jakes, Amigos, Rooms, Pennies, Girl, , ______.



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05-31-2005 at 06:46 PM
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The Stew Boy
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Are they supposed to form an acronym?
05-31-2005 at 10:54 PM
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Tablesaw
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The Stew Boy wrote:
Are they supposed to form an acronym?
No.

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06-02-2005 at 07:58 AM
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Maurog
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How about "Mile" for that blank? And I bet there are some more possible answers :)

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06-02-2005 at 10:26 AM
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Tablesaw
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Maurog wrote:
How about "Mile" for that blank? And I bet there are some more possible answers :)
Ding!

When I first wrote the puzzle a few years ago, that answer wouldn't have been correct. Now, of course, it is, and I think it's a much nicer solution than "1/2" or "MM".

Your turn to write a puzzle.

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06-02-2005 at 11:14 AM
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Oneiromancer
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Nice puzzle. I almost posted asking if that extra comma was intended...now I see it was indeed. :)

Game on,

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06-02-2005 at 09:46 PM
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krammer
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Someone want to explain that one for us lesser mortals?

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06-02-2005 at 09:51 PM
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Oneiromancer
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Tablesaw wrote:
Fill in the blank in the following sequence:
Capricorn, Two Jakes, Three Amigos, 4 Rooms, Pennies, Girl, Se7en, 8 Mile or 8 MM or 8 1/2, etc.

I've never heard of One Capricorn, 5 Pennies (except for a Nickel :P), or Six Girl, so I'm not sure on those ones. They all seem to be movies, in order of increasing number, with the number removed of course.

Game on,

[Edited by Oneiromancer at Local Time:06-03-2005 at 12:26 AM]

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06-03-2005 at 12:24 AM
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Oneiromancer wrote:I've never heard of One Capricorn.
Capricorn One. 70's movie about faking a Mars landing.
06-03-2005 at 02:20 AM
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Seven Brides for Seven Brothers could be some inspiration in there.

Capricorn One

The Five Pennies

Six Black Girls (UK title)

I know far too much about movies...

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06-03-2005 at 03:44 AM
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Tablesaw
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DiMono wrote:
Six Black Girls (UK title)
Actually, the intended film was Girl 6.

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06-03-2005 at 08:55 AM
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Oneiromancer
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DiMono wrote:
I know far too much about searching for movies on IMDB...

Fixed that for you. ;)

Game on,

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06-03-2005 at 08:35 PM
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Blondbeard
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Well... Do you have any puzzle Maurog? Just checking :)
06-10-2005 at 11:36 PM
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Maurog
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I'm starting to think there aren't many puzzles left not yet covered in this topic. Anyways, here's a puzzle for you:

What is the next word in this sequence?

Puzzle, On, Noah, Be, Puzzle, On, ...

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06-12-2005 at 06:38 AM
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The next word is puzzle because the "..." is part of the sequence.
Just a guess. :)

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06-12-2005 at 07:10 PM
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It would be be.

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06-12-2005 at 07:17 PM
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Maurog
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... is not part of the sequence, its there to show you where the word you guess should be. And its not 'puzzle' :)

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06-13-2005 at 01:28 PM
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